Transgender equality advocates say Tennesseans can help their cause by holding elected officials accountable in November and urging them to act when they take office.

"Those elections are coming up in just two months," said Marisa Richmond, the past president of Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition. "You need to make that part of the evaluation when you look at those candidates and ask those questions."

Richmond, who also serves on the Metro Human Relations Commission and is considered to be the first transgender person appointed to a government board in the state, shared that message Tuesday evening during a panel on supporting transgender youth.

The discussion, held at The Temple and presented by the Davidson County synagogue's social justice team, gave an overview of the pro- and anti-transgender policies already on the books, what more needs to be done and the barriers to change.

Synagogue's social justice team

Rabbi Shana Mackler, who moderated the panel, counseled the 50 or so people in attendance on their shared responsibility to care for transgender children.

"It may not be an issue that directly affects individual families, but I think that, that's something that we need to work on as a community," Mackler said. "These are our kids and I think that this is something that we all should be able to take part in — protecting their rights and helping to create those policies."

Supporting transgender youth is one of the social justice team's current areas of focus for its Walk the Talk series, she said. The other two are criminal justice reform and immigrant rights.

"Our goal for this series is to have a conversation with people doing the meaningful work in these areas so we might as a community identify ways that we can lend our support, that we might lend our voices, our connections and perhaps our votes to bring about justice where we see it lacking or denied," Mackler said.

Richmond explained the challenges facing transgender people in America. She pointed to high rates of bullying, depression, homelessness and violence, especially against transgender women of color. Resources exist, but they are limited.

Community support for transgender people

She encouraged those in the room to get to know those who are transgender.

"We like pizza parties and movie nights too," Richmond said.

For those who want to more to affect policy, panelist Chris Sanders, executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project, said it is important to show up at the legislative plaza and talk to lawmakers about the issues. They need to show up for committee meetings for anti-transgender bills and encourage their friends to get involved, too.

"Transgender people are still very much unfortunately a useful scapegoat in many parts of the state — an issue that you can run on," Sanders said. "I don't think we've seen the last of anti-transgender legislation at the state level."

The panel happened to fall on the same day Tennessee Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III announced he disagreed with a federal ruling that said transgender people could not be fired because of their gender identity. As a result, Tennessee joins 15 other states in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse it.

Nashville school board member Christiane Buggs also spoke on the panel, shedding light on how to affect policy at the school level.

Family support for transgender kids

Kathy Halbrooks, co-chair of the Nashville chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, said their meetings today are almost entirely filled with the parents of transgender children. PFLAG chapters across the country are drawing more and more people because of gender identity, she said.

PFLAG meetings can help ease anxieties and build hope through the sharing of stories.

"It's really rewarding when you see a parent come in and their child has come out and they look terrified and very nervous, very upset, and as they hear from other parents their face changes, they calm down and everything just becomes better," Halbrooks said.

Halbrooks introduced Nichole McVeigh, who is part of the chapter's leadership, and her daughter Rain McVeigh, inviting them to share their experience of verbal and physical bullying in Rutherford County schools. Eventually, they enrolled Rain in an online school.

For a longtime, Rain McVeigh did not tell her parents about the bullying out of fear they would not accept her for being transgender.

"One of the things I was scared about, which of course was not the case, was the idea of 'not my child,' which is something where you can be the most supportive person in the world, but you don't want it to be your child," Rain McVeigh said. "It's a very scary thing for a lot of trans people."

Parents should accept their child no matter what, she said.

Reach Holly Meyer at hmeyer@tennessean.com or 615-259-8241 and on Twitter @HollyAMeyer.